Drink Olive Juice, and help a very good cause: Olive herself

Whitewall Brewing’s newest brew might have a mouth-puckering name, but the reason it exists is a sweet one.

The Marysville brewery is releasing Olive Juice this Saturday to benefit a young girl named Olive Ray, who is fighting a brain tumor. All proceeds from sales of the beer will be donated to Team Oli and the Pediatric Brain Tumor Research Fund at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Saturday’s event begins at 1 p.m. at the brewery.

Olive’s parents, Aaron and Trista Ray, worked with Laurel Wallner, the wife of Whitewall co-owner Sean Wallner, at AT&T. They had an idea of collaborating with Sean and fellow Whitewall owner and brewer Aaron Wight on a beer and naming it after Olive. The two brewers jumped at the opportunity.

“She is a really sweet little girl going through something a kid should never have to endure,” Wight said.

The cause is especially meaningful to Wight, who lost his best friend, Scott Dauenhauer, to brain cancer a few years ago.

“This really hit home for me,” he said. “We just thought, ‘Anything we can do to help!’ ”

As for the beer, Olive Juice is an American-style wheat beer conditioned on fresh peaches at the end of fermentation. Along with being on tap at the brewery Saturday, the beer will also be on at Steins Taphouse and Kafé Neo in Arlington, Another Castle Arcade in Marysville and Center Public House and Hops n Drops in Snohomish. Some locations will also donate some of the proceeds.

There will be a food truck, lemonade stand and kids’ activities at Saturday’s event.

New brewfest to benefit youth soccer

The Snohomish Youth Soccer Club is always searching for new ways to raise money and help more kids play soccer. This time, the club’s officials turned to beer.

“We were trying to think of something outside of the box,” said Amy Mikulsky, Snohomish Youth Soccer rec scheduler. “We have a large, beautiful complex and we thought, ‘What if we did a beerfest?’ We kind of ran with it.”

The inaugural River’s Edge Brewfest to benefit the Snohomish Youth Soccer Club features nearly 30 local breweries and will be held Saturday at Stocker Fields in Snohomish. There also will be live music, food trucks and raffles.

SYSC officials reached out to a number of brewers in Snohomish, including Greg Krsak and Elise Mattson of Scrappy Punk Brewery. Mattson also is an organizer for the burgeoning Snohomish Ale Trail.

“They did a great job of engaging all the Snohomish breweries and bringing us in early,” Krsak said of the SYSC organizers. “We just gave them advice on how to run a beerfest.”

Snohomish Youth Soccer has more than 1,000 rec players and another 500 premier players. Last year, club scholarships went to more than 100 players in the premier league and provided assistance in the rec program as well.

“The more we raise, the more we can help,” Mikulsky said.

All six Snohomish breweries will be taking part in the brewfest. Advance tickets are $30 and include 10 tasting tokens and a souvenir glass. For tickets and more information, visit www.riversedgebrewfest.com.

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